Northwest Notebook. Yesterday.

Steel Executives Got Their Start In Palatine

January 07, 1996|By Larry Mayer. Special to the Tribune.

Humble beginnings led to highly successful business careers for two Palatine youths more than a century ago.

Walter E. Daniels and William J. Filbert, classmates in a tiny Palatine schoolroom in the 1870s, emerged as titans of industry. Daniels became assistant secretary and treasurer of the Illinois Steel Co., while Filbert was a director of the United States Steel Co.

Daniels reminisced about their friendship upon Filbert's death in 1944 in an article in U.S. Steel's company magazine:

"Will Filbert was the very first boy whom I ever knew aside from my brothers, and I recall him distinctly as far back as 73 years ago when he used to come down to our farm to bring a cow to pasture. He wore a blue suit with short trousers and a black patent leather belt, and I thought that he was the best dressed boy that I ever saw, and he probably was, for I was just a farm boy, wearing high-water pants.

" . . . When Will was 11 years of age and I was 10, we sat in the same seat in the second room at school (in those days we had double seats)."

Daniels and Filbert later sat together on a train while commuting to their jobs at the Chicago & North Western Railway's offices in Chicago.

In those days, the ambition of most young Palatine boys was a job with the railroad. The free transportation and free lunches offset the $40 monthly wages. Daniels, who eventually moved to Los Angeles, died in 1951.